Your ultimate guide to the Xbox One's greatest feature

THE BEST: Backwards Compatibility is the best feature ever brought to the Xbox One console

Before the Xbox One was launched, one of the big questions on gamers lips was whether their Xbox 360 game libraries would be making the transition to the Xbox One through backwards compatibility.

The answer as it turned out was no.

At the time, Todd Holmdahl, Microsoft’s corporate vice president of hardware said: “We started with a completely new architecture for this generation, and the architecture that we have with the 360, that would have been limiting to go forward with.”

Then in 2014, Microsoft Exec Phil Spencer gave some hope that something was in the works, saying: "Back compat is always a hot topic at the turn of a generation, and I get why, especially on [Xbox 360] so many people bought so much digital content and it means that a lot of us, we're holding on to our 360s."

"I get the question. I totally respect the question. There’s nothing I can say about it right now, but I’ll just say 'I hear you.' I definitely hear you and I'll continue to try to work to build something that can help people out."

Then a year later at E3 2015 Microsoft unveiled the Xbox One Backward Compatibility feature as part of the the New Xbox One Experience and it's easily been the most popular features of the console to date.

*** Take a look at the complete list of Backwards compatible games on the Xbox One, below: ***

Xbox One Backwards Compatible games

Xbox One Backward Compatibility allows users to play their favourite Xbox 360 games on the Xbox One.

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Xbox One Backwards Compatible List

There's now 135 backwards compatible games available to play on Xbox One and Microsoft has committed to many more coming to the console in the future.

It's now become the most important feature of the entire console, loved by fans and integral to marketing campaigns for new games.

The latest pre-order for Dark Souls 3 is proof of this, with anyone who buys the game early benefitting from a free copy of the original Dark Souls available to play on their new next-gen console.

Namco Bandai

OFFER: Anyone who pre-orders Dark Souls 3 will receive the original game for free

In late January Microsoft community manager Larry "Major Nelson" Hryb announced that Microsoft would stop releasing huge batches of new backwards compatible games at the end of every month.

Instead the plan for Microsoft is to start releasing backwards compatible games as and when the games were ready.